I love questions that prompt me to think, and Laura Tremaine is especially good at coming up with those, so when I stumbled across her list of 10 questions of reflection on pandemic life, I loved the idea of hashing out my thoughts on the blog.
In Part 1, I answered the first two questions: What was life like in early 2020? and What was the biggest change?
Moving onto the next two questions…
3. What were your coping mechanisms?
This is hard question to answer honestly, because aren’t all of our coping mechanisms a little bit embarrassing? I am my own worst enemy, but when I look back at how I coped with the high stress of lockdown, I wish I had reacted in any other way than the way that I reacted. I wish I had been productive in stress. I wish that I had been helpful in stress. Man, sometimes I wish that I had even been emotion-less in stress. BUT, that is not me, so my coping mechanisms were very high-strung emotions. There were no high highs, I just fell into the low lows. I was anxious and scared much of the first few months of the pandemic. I obsessed over staying healthy and checking temps and was afraid to wear masks. I made Theo strip off his uniform before entering the house when he got off work. I cried- a lot. I tried to pray, but there is something about being unable to calm down that makes connection with God and other people challenging. I don’t know…maybe I am painting myself in a harsher light than I actually was. I mean, I somehow managed to do school at home with Tera, keep the kids going on a steady routine and teach my own classes.
I divide pandemic life up into three parts. The first part was defined by fear of the virus and wallowing. I would say that stage for me lasted from March-May. When the death of George Floyd swept our nation into an uproar, I walked into the second stage. I was now not only afraid of a virus, I was terrified for the life of my husband. I was deeply hurt and offended and felt lonelier than ever. That stage was basically all summer long- from June-August. The third stage was when I was finally able to move out of fight or flight mode and start to process everything. I would say that I’m still in that stage, although in a much, much, much healthier place than I was in August.
In the back of my mind, I am always “shoulding” myself. I am always telling myself what I “should” be doing at any given time. This does give me a somewhat intrinsic motivation to have healthy coping mechanism- you “should” pray. You “should” go for a run. You “should” talk to someone. I’m thankful that even throughout all the stress of the past year, I didn’t turn to alcohol, medication, TV, or food. That’s not to say that I have been or currently am in the most healthy state. But I’m thankful that I never tried to cope by turning to something that doesn’t satisfy.
4. What did connection in your relationships look like?
I cannot even begin to express how thankful I am for the Moms weekend that I went on the weekend before we went into lockdown. We had planned that weekend for months and had no idea what covid even was when we booked it and planned it out. Spending that weekend with those three ladies catapulted us into togetherness, even when we were apart. We were able to text through our days and our fears and even some laughs.
Another relationship that I really began to develop deeper during lockdown was the relationship with my parents. They knew that I was struggling big time and they started to call me every day. I knew that I had a lifeline in that. I also began to talk more and more to my Grandpa via phone and email. It wasn’t fun feeling my incredibly high stress and I still cannot believe that I lived in panic mode for MONTHS, but having those relationships were like anchors to keep me grounded.
As I sit here and answer these questions, I am so thankful that I can write these answers from a much better place. I can look back and see how stressed I was because I am no longer in that state of stress. I can look back and realize these blessings because I am not currently fighting the chaos of that time.
And for that, I am thankful.